As 1976 morphed into 1977 my interest in model railroading was not what it used to be. Then as ’77 rolled on I didn’t do much model railroading wise, and my reading of the hobby’s magazines was minimal. A few MRs now and then was all I managed. I was no longer the obsessive I started out as four years earlier. By the fall of ’77 the transformation to nearly casual bystander status was almost complete because at that time I was starting my last year of high school and there was a lot of pressure to do well and get into a university. My focus was elsewhere.
When I found out recently that it was 1977 when the N-scale version of the Ramsey Journal Building was released I realized I had missed a lot that year as I paged through the old magazines from that time. I was intrigued, and I’ve started to more methodically read through RMC, MR, and RM from ’77. Better late than never I guess.
The biggest thing that passed me by was that was the year RMC began its now famous series on Allen McClelland’s Virginian & Ohio model railroad. The series got started in the January issue and concluded well beyond 1977. RMC recently celebrated Mr. McClelland and his layout in their March 2023 issue, and there’s an associated book by Tony Koester.
Maybe by March ‘77 publisher Hal Carstens was feeling the focus on very large layouts could alienate readers with more modest circumstances as his editorial in that month’s issue focused on the beauty of small layouts. Mr. Carstens noted the work of legendary model railroader Bill Schopp as a pioneer in small layout design. This may surprise some modern readers as Mr. Schopp is often misremembered, if remembered at all, for designing only large spaghetti bowl layouts. Writing against the day, Mr. Carstens had this to say in his Notes on an Old Timetable column:
Schopp’s forte was building and designing layouts for apartments, small homes and other habitations not having room for the larger-size model railroad. Schopp was doing the impossible back in 1940 and earlier, when most locomotives required a 24” minimum radius. If Bill needed a sharp No. 3 switch on a curve, he built one. When Walthers’ 4-6-4 Baltic wouldn’t negotiate the 14”-radius curves Bill had to use, he built a 4-4-0 that would take those curves. When Bill tired of standard-gauge steam railroading in small space, he plunged into narrow gauge and traction which were also novelties in those earlier days of HO.
Most books and articles in the early days recommended 24” minimum radius, which meant a layout had to be at least 6x8 feet in size to be much more than a loop. By using sharper radii, Bill dropped down to 4x6 feet, and even as small as 2x3 feet, all in HO. The smaller pikes demanded use of sharper turnouts, usually custom-made by Bill.
It reads like Mr. Schopp was a pioneer in what we would today classify as micro-layouts. Ok, according to Mr. Carstens the smallest of his layouts had a 2’x3’ (6 sq. ft.) footprint, and, by definition, today the largest a layout can be and still be classified as micro is 4 sq. ft., say 2’x2’. But, we’re comparing layouts built with technology available in the 1940s to today, which is hardly an apples to apples comparison. What is comparable though was he was confronted with many of the same home spatial constraints we are today and did amazing things - considered radical at the time - with what was then available.
My reading has gone a bit further back than 1977, and I’ve stuck a toe or two into 1976 - time travel has many attractions :-) Mr. Carstens also explored the topic of small layouts in his September ’76 Notes on an Old Timetable, and again discussed Bill Schopp’s work in the area, elaborating a bit on some of the aspects he raised again in March ’77,
Bill’s available space was usually very limited. For many years he lived in an apartment, later moving to a Trenton row house which we know today as a condominium. It follows that the layouts Bill preferred to make and operate were small ones: 3x4 or 4x6 or some equally small size. Bill did commercial track design work for all comers, many of them giant multi-track pikes based on the Pennsylvania’s busy four-track mainline.
Bill’s layout ideas make increasing sense in this time of rising costs.
I wonder a lot about Mr. Schopp’s model railroading work. He was to model railroading and RMC what C. L. Strong was to amateur science and Scientific American. Mr. Schopp published over a 1,000 articles on just about every conceivable model railroading topic making him the 20th century’s most prolific writer in the field. Mr. Carstens started his September ’76 column off with a paragraph on Bill Schopp’s legacy in case modern readers were unfamiliar,
The late Bill Schopp was one of those likeable hobby pioneers who learned HO model railroading the hard way by doing it himself. He scratch built steam locomotives when there were hardly any to be bought. He successfully ran overhead trolley when O gaugers said it couldn’t be done. He dabbled in HOn3 and later in HOn2 years before you could buy it commercially. He also delighted in making oddball special track units such as grand junctions, switches on curves and other weird formations not available commercially.
Bill Schopp died in 1974. He retired years before and had not written anything for awhile when I started in the hobby in ’73. He had no direct influence on me at the time, although indirect influences were likely many (for example, he briefly collaborated with E. L. Moore during ELM’s ‘fantasy’ building period). All that talk of small living spaces and rising prices in Mr. Carstens’ editorials gets me thinking that Bill Schopp likely has things to say that are relevant for us here in the 3rd decade of the 21st century. Maybe ’77 holds other surprises.
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